In 2018 the Spike Lee film Black Klansman won the Grand Prix (Great Prize) at the Cannes International Film Festival and was nominated for six American Academy Awards (including Best Picture, Best Director, and Best Adapted Screenplay). It won for Best Adapted Screenplay.
Based on the memoir of Ron Stallworth (with the same title), the film Black Klansman tells the story of Stallworth’s undercover infiltration—with the help and support of fellow police officer Flip Zimmerman—of the Colorado Springs chapter of the Ku Klux Klan, eventually expanding to conversation with and a visit from KKK Grand Wizard David Duke. What starts out as intelligence gathering of the local KKK chapter expands not only in scope but also in danger and violence, with policemen Ron Stallworth and Flip Zimmerman learning much along the way. And, at the end, with Spike Lee’s added actual footage of the well-known 2017 Charlottesville car attack that killed Heather Heyer, we too can learn much from Black Klansman.